


believing for the sake of it

by theappleppielifestyle



Series: Jamie's Journey [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:13:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He lingers when he passes the freezer section in the supermarket. He breathes mist into the car window when he can and draws Easter eggs in it so it runs down. He wakes up from dreams of hoodies with ice around the cuffs, and a smile so warm he’s surprised it doesn’t start to melt, start sloughing off hotly and slowly, dripping down his chin.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>Every snow day, Jamie thinks of him. </i></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jamie and Jack, in the years following. Cupcake and Jamie become unexpectedly close, Babytooth makes an appearance, Tooth quotes Journey, and none of them ever stop believing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	believing for the sake of it

Afterwards- because of course they’re all going to divide what happened into _before_ and _after_ , it’s almost impossible not to- Jamie knows, logically, that that’s probably going to be the last he ever sees of it. Of guardians, of Pitch, of everything that isn’t alarm clocks and homework and his mom telling him to brush his teeth before he goes to bed.

Rationally, he knows that every kid doesn’t get Jack Frost with his arm angled back, in mid-motion and mid-throw and mid-laugh, his snowball in an arc through the air towards his neighbour’s head so snow sludges down their neck. That when someone is on the cusp of just giving up, the Easter Bunny isn’t going to magically appear and tell them to keep their chins up, rocking on his back paws as he does.

So yes, Jamie knows this. He knows this like he’s starting to know long division, like he knows his mother’s eyes are the same brown as his, like he knows not to touch the dials on the oven.

He knows all of this, and you know what else he knows?

That by age eight, he’s not supposed to believe in any of it anyway, and look what happened when he did.

 

 

It doesn’t change much After.

_‘After_ with a capital _A_ ,’ that’s what he and the others have taken to calling it- him and Cupcake and everyone else, grinning at each other during class and when they haul each other up the giant oak in Scotty’s backyard, like they have an inside joke no-one else knows about.

Their parents all puzzle at the freak hurricane that rocked the town and destroyed some buildings and a few cars, and at how unbelievable it is that no-one was able to see any of it as it was happening, that no-one got hurt.

Jamie sits at the kitchen table and pretends he’s not making a face with his mashed potatoes and tomato sauce and says _unbelievable_ along with both his parents, shaking his head just like they do, and Sophie giggles, letting her head flop side to side in a weak imitation of all three of them.

“Un-bee-leeeeveable,” she yells, and pushes her chair back, her feet hitting the floor and her shirt getting dragged upwards by the leg of the table. “Hop, hop, hop, Jamieee!”

Jamie laughs, but not for the reason his parents think.

 

 

They’re all closer now, even with the usual headstrong, steady bond of all being kids that live in the same neighbourhood. Sleepovers now usually consist of excited re-enactments, and Jamie is always Jack, no matter how it turns out. He scrapes ice from the inside of whoever’s freezer they’re at- most of the time it’s Ollie’s, because his parents are the loosest about this kind of thing- and most Sunday mornings, the adults of the house wake up to find ground-up freezer sludge in the bedroom down the hall, soaking through the sheets.

They start inviting Cupcake to the sleepovers- _Kelly_ , she tells them after a few days, but she prefers it if they call her Cupcake, as long as they don’t try to feed her any, because as it turns out, she loathes them with a fiery passion. Her parents aren’t as nice as everyone else’s, and even Cupcake tends to avoid them when they come over. Not that they do much, they try to avoid it unless they really have to.

Jamie ropes everyone into ice-skating in the winter. He’s never been good at it, he falls over his own ankles and his skates are too big and he gets blisters if he stays out too long, but he spends as much time as he can out there, skidding with his arms eagle-spread and always on the tail-end of a snowball.

Every time that he laughs and it comes out as a puff of mist, something behind his ribs kicks up.

 

 

For years, it doesn’t show like he thought it would, even when he watches out for the smallest sign, the tiniest inkling of something he might have missed. A shadow out of the corner of his eye at the bus stop. A flash of gold as he wakes up, before he reaches to turn off the alarm.

Something, anything, and it never happens like he expects it to.

He catches his parents arguing when he’s eleven, hushed whispers in the laundry room just before they serve the turkey.

“I thought you got him that present-”

“I thought _you_ did-”

The present in question turns out to be a snowglobe, and no matter how much he shakes it, or whispers to it, or begs it, it stays a snowglobe. He even tries giving it to Sophie, who babbles, _bunnybunnybunny_ , and blows a raspberry, but nothing happens.

Inside of it, there are five figures, like he knew there would be- Santa, with one hand hefted and splayed out in a wave. The Tooth Fairy, waving politely along with him, her wings poised behind her. Bunny, who is tilting a boomerang in a salute, and Sandman, with a handful of golden dust that never seems to run out as it sifts through his fingers.

And last but not least, Jack, with one hand in his pocket and one on his staff, smiling at him just like he remembers.

“That’s strange,” Jamie’s dad says finally, on New Years Eve.

Jamie looks up from where he’s been palming the snowglobe, hand to hand, on the coffee table. “What is?”

“The snowglobe,” his dad says, motioning towards it with his mug. “I mean, aren’t snowglobes only supposed to snow when you shake it? It must have cost a lot, to make it do that.”

Jamie looks down at it, down to the glass which never gets any warmer, no matter how much time he spends holding it, and Jack’s eyes are almost glinting.

The snowglobe never stops snowing until Jamie’s mom accidentally catches it with a broom handle one day as she’s cleaning up his room, and it breaks against the floor.

Jamie scoops everything up with a plastic bag, picking the pieces of glass out of the floor with tweezers. He glances at what’s left every few seconds, but the figures never move, and when he goes to touch it, the artificial snow is plastic.

 

 

Middle school passes gradually, cringingly slow, fraught with growing pains and people sneering when he mentions anything about Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or what the hell ever. Jamie learns to stop mentioning them, except when he gets back to the others.

They still play Guardians sometimes, half-hearted attempts as everyone grows out of playing and sledding and getting snow on their new clothes.

“It’s just water,” Jamie tries one year, after Elenor had gotten cross with him for a snowball to the back of her hoodie. “It washes out.”

She makes a face before flipping him off, going back to stand under the safety of the porch.

Jamie looks over at Cupcake, who shrugs, all of twelve years old and still as bulky as she used to be; looming over all the neighbourhood kids even she isn’t trying to look menacing. “Her loss.”

“Her loss,” Jamie agrees, and gets a slushball to the nose for his troubles.

 

 

The neighbourhood pool closes down and the summer is ‘ruined,’ apparently, but at this point, Jamie has stopped caring much about summer.

Not that he hates it, or anything- he loves it, he loves the _ripeness_ of everything, how he can wear cut-off shorts and run through the sprinklers and have an excuse for too many ice creams at once. He loves the lazy days him and the others spend under the trees, even though the talk about that night has dwindled until it only gets mentioned once every few months, and even then only in passing.

High school is in less than a week, and Jamie lets the sun bake his shoulders from lack of sunscreen that his mother is going to kill him for, and reaches for another ice block.

Somehow, the crunch of ice between his teeth is better than the sun that’s balming the backs of his knees, dusting everything it can touch with freckles he only gets after he gets the kind of sunburn that makes it painful to stand under the shower spray.

He closes his eyes and pushes his hand into the icebox that’s holding the rest of their food, and only takes it out when his wrist starts to go numb.

 

 

Sometimes, Jamie wonders if it was even real at all. Wonders if it was a fever dream, or he was just that desperate, if he was willing to grab onto anything, even if it was nothing.

On those days, he slips out the window and scales the tree, and over the years it gets harder and harder to find a good footing.

He creeps around the back of three houses, climbing fences and trying not to make the dogs bark, until he manages to knock three times on the mesh outside Cupcake’s window.

She always answers, even if she’s cross most of the time, with her eyes scrunched up from turning the lamp on to get over here.

“What,” she would say.

Jamie would shrug, sort of helplessly. “Sorry,” he would whisper. “It’s just one of those days, I guess. Should I come back later?”

And Cupcake would squint at him, her hair in a halo around her head. “Don’t be stupid. I’ll be out in a second.”

They’d sit in the empty kennel out back, where Cupcake’s family planned to have a dog but never got around to buying one, and sometimes they’d talk about things. But most of the time, Cupcake would wait patiently, albeit slightly blurrily, for Jamie.

It doesn’t come out right, no matter how many times he comes around. He says, “I know I shouldn’t,” and then stops. Tries again: “I mean, I’m _trying_. Really, I am.”

He can never say what he means to, and Cupcake sits in the dark with her hand resting comfortably against his shoulder.

“I miss him,” Jamie says one day, when it’s raining and the water is hitting the roof so hard and fast he’s not sure she heard him.

He thinks that up until a few minutes later, when Cupcake shifts, her foot slipping in the blankets. “’Him?’’”

Jamie startles, and his head almost hits the ceiling of the kennel- he’s grown, and now they both have to duck instead of just her. “What?”

“You said ‘him.’ Not ‘them.’ You said, ‘I miss him.’”

Jamie opens his mouth to say, _well, yeah,_ but pauses. “I miss them too,” he says after a while, when the rain has quietened down a bit, but not enough for him to be openly audible. “I just- it’s him, you know? It’s- it’s him, and I miss him the most. I don’t know why.”

Cupcake nods, and he feels it against his shoulder rather than sees it.

She leans against the doorway, and it’s freezing in here, and Jamie doesn’t tell her he’s starting to like it better that way.

“I miss them, too,” Cupcake says eventually, after she’s been quiet for so long he had started to think she had fallen asleep.

They sit there like that, on a school night after midnight, and they’re both going to get soaked trying to get back in their individual beds, and Jamie leans into her, comforting hand and wonders how it got to be like this.

 

 

He takes to talking to the sky at night, when he can’t be bothered climbing trees or it’s hailing or whatever. Mostly in winter, because the sight of the snow unravels something in him nowadays, but sometimes when the leaves are crisping or the blossoms start to come in, he leans against the windowsill and looks up at the moon.

“Just give me a sign,” Jamie says, his forehead pressing into the window, but unlike last time, nothing happens. Unlike last time, doesn’t know what he’s looking for a signal for.

 

 

By the time Easter rolls around the year Jamie turns sixteen, Sophie says something, and Jamie forgets what it is as soon as she says it. It’s fast, a throwaway comment that Jamie almost misses, and she’s almost eleven now and he’s still not sure, but he thinks it’s some joke towards their baby cousin believing in the Easter Bunny.

He catches her by the shoulder, and she looks up at him, blue eyes set just like their mother’s.

“What did you say?”

She frowns. “Jamie, let me go, I have to get to Marcy’s bowling party.”

“But you said,” Jamie says, and something is twisting in his gut, remembering when he came up to his mother’s shoulders, instead of towering over her like he does now. “You said something about the Easter Bunny.”

She looks at him. “Yeah,” she says uncertainly. “So what?”

“So you _remember_ him, right?” Jamie thinks he sounds kind of pathetic right now, his voice almost cracking, clawing at whatever he can reach. “You remember that night we all went out and faced Pitch? And- and Santa Claus and Jack and _Bunny_ , you’ve got to remember _Bunny_ -”

Her eyes are getting wider, and her frown isn’t going away, it’s just wavering. “I-”

“What?”

“I- I think I had a dream like… that,” she says, and stumbles over half of it. “But that was-”

She frowns and keeps it, keeps the dent between her eyebrows and holds onto it, shaking her head and pushing his hand off her shoulder. “Why? What are you-”

“Come _on_ ,” Jamie says, and it comes out too desperate, too shallow, too scraping. “I know you were younger than I was, but you _have_ to-”

“It was a _dream_ -”

“We faced him,” Jamie says, and he’s too young and too old for this, simultaneously. “I know none of us hang out anymore, except Cupcake, but Marcus and Ollie and Cupcake and _you and me and everyone else_ , we faced Pitch, we _beat_ him!”

Sophie starts to back away, her mouth still twisting down, down, down, and Jamie moves forwards before making his legs stop.

“Please,” he says. “Please, you have to remember. It was _real_ , Soph. We can ask Cupcake if you want.”

“Cupcake will just go along with it,” Sophie says. “She’ll say whatever you tell her to say, that’s not fair, Jamie- I’m not _stupid_ , I’m not a _baby_ , I know they’re not real, especially that Jack Frost guy, who actually _believes_ in-”

“Don’t,” Jamie blurts, and he knows it’s not like that, he knows it’s not some Tinkerbell, clap-if-you-believe-in-faries thing, but it sends a bolt through his spine, because what if- oh god, what if Jack’s here and he just can’t see him because not enough people believe in him?

“Please don’t say that,” Jamie says, and has to suck in a breath. “I- please? We, we can go to Cupcake, or Marcus, or _whoever’s_ , just-”

“Don’t be mean,” Sophie says, and stomps off before he can try to stop her, slamming the door on her way out.

 

 

“I miss you,” Jamie says to a thin, angled snowman with a twig-and-stone smile that Jamie put on himself, clumsy and shivering. It doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing. “I miss you and no-one believes in anything anymore and I hate it, it’s awful.”

There’s no answer, but he wasn’t expecting one, so.

When he wakes up with frost on his window the next morning, he forces down the excitement and tells himself it’s just nature doing what nature does, that’s what _happens_ to glass.

He lingers when he passes the freezer section in the supermarket. He breathes mist into the car window when he can and draws Easter eggs in it so it runs down. He wakes up from dreams of hoodies with ice around the cuffs, and a smile so warm he’s surprised it doesn’t start to melt, start sloughing off hotly and slowly, dripping down his chin.

Every snow day, he thinks of him.

 

 

Three weeks after his seventeenth birthday, he misses his footing while climbing down the tree next to his window and pitches forwards slamming headfirst into a branch. Then another branch, lower down. Then, just for good measure, he slams into the dirt with the point of his chin.

All in all, it’s incredibly painful and he wakes up groaning with a bruised mouth.

When he spits a bloody tooth into his palm, he almost bites his lip trying not to laugh before remembering, _oh, right, agonizing pain_ , and stopping.

He doesn’t have to get stitches in his cheek, which is a relief, and he jokes to Sophia about the Tooth Fairy in one of his many futile attempts to do something about her, she looks at him with vague eyes that make something in him spark with hope.

He doesn’t tell Cupcake, because there’s no use getting her excited for nothing, and doesn’t tell anyone, even though they’ve almost stopped talking about it altogether now- he slips the tooth under his pillow and for a solid half an hour as he’s going to sleep, he lets himself believe.

 

 

When he wakes up, his first instinct is to check his pillow.

Instead, he clenches his teeth together to hold in a breath and eases himself up. He gets out of bed, gets dressed, brushes his teeth- careful of the sore spots in his mouth, which are surprisingly hard to brush around- skips the mouthwash due to it making him want to die when he used it last night, and went to sit down on his bed.

He takes another breath, and holds it.

Takes a breath. Holds it.

Inhaling hard and fast, his hand darts out and he grabs the pillow, pulling it up.

For a while, he just stares.

He stares, and stares, until he starts to feel drool oozing over his bottom lip and raises a hand to wipe it off. Then he bursts out laughing- wild, incredulous, _hopeful_ laughter, because what the hell else is he supposed to do?

Under his pillow, on the sheets, there’s a note.

**Hate to quote Journey at you, kid, but don’t stop believing.**

 

The ‘don’t stop believing’ is underlined, and it looks like the pen pressed down so hard it nearly broke the paper.

And in the note, curled up in the folds, is a shiny quarter, and on top of that is Babytooth, snoring quietly and sounding like his sister’s electric toothbrush.

She’s tinier than he remembers, but that could just be because he’s a lot bigger.

“Hey,” he says, after he’s finally woken her up with his laughter, when she’s buzzing irritatedly at him for it. “Hey, Babytooth, how’ve you been?”

The annoyed buzzing stops, replaced by a gleeful little squeak, like, _oh, it’s you_ , and then a series of rapid squeaks after that, pointing at herself.

“Yeah, I can see you,” Jamie laughs. “Kind of hard to stop believing after there’s a showdown in the middle of your town, you know?”

Babytooth just squeaks, and then starts to zip around his head, snatching at his hair as she passes, messing it up. She nuzzles at his cheek with her needle-point beak; bumps her head a few times against his forehead, still squeaking.

Jamie says, “It’s good to see you, too.” Says, “I missed you,” and only realizes it as he says it. It’s heavier than he thought it would be, sitting in his throat for a few seconds before he manages it.

She smiles at him, every bit of the faery he had met briefly all those years ago, when she had been squawking indignantly at him for accidentally shoving into her with his shoulder.

He supposes he’s not every bit of the boy she had met all those years ago, back when he was small enough to get into the fairground for free, when he was skinny enough to fit into the shirts Sophia wears when she gets cold enough, because according to her they’re hideous and she’ll only wear them if no-one outside of family sees her wearing it.

He laughs again, letting his head knock backwards into the wall, and Babytooth drops into his hand when he holds it out.

She fits there snugly, burrowing into his palm, purring as she does it.

 

 

Cupcake’s reaction is just like Jamie expects- the initial shock, the stutter of recognition, and then-

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Cupcake says, and says the last word loud enough for her to shove her hand over her mouth.

Babytooth jitters in Jamie’s hand, butting her head against Cupcake’s chin.

“Sorry,” Cupcake hisses in a whisper. “I won’t say it again, jeez.” Then she laughs, and she’s grinning, putting a hand over her mouth. “ _Seriously_ , Jamie?”

Jamie shrugs, grinning just as hard. “What?”

“We’re at school!”

He shrugs again as Babytooth flies back into his pocket, nestling into his borrowed car keys. “So? No-one believes, this is a high school.”

“But what if they do?”

Jamie looks up at her. “Who believes in the Tooth Fairy at our age? Who believes in any of them after they turn ten?”

“We do.”

“Yeah, because we have proof! Even I- god, Cupcake, even I nearly stopped believing for a minute there, if Jack hadn’t come in.”

She doesn’t answer for a second, her eyes still in the tiny lump in his pocket, the smile still not fully gone from her face.

“ _God_ , Jamie,” she says finally, and laughs again, and then Jamie laughs, and then they’re both cracking up in the boy’s bathroom during science class, leaning against the sinks to stop them from falling over, laughing until they’re both red in the face from it and neither of them can breathe in.

For a while, it’s kind of okay again.

 

 

Jamie can’t say he’s not surprised- and glad, _so_ goddamn glad- when every single one of the people he was with that night start gaping at the sight of Babytooth flitting around their heads. Without fail, every one of them grins and starts to laugh, says something to the extent of “Jamie, holy _crap_ ,” which Babytooth then berates them for via butting her head against their jaw.

Jamie watches the disbelieving joy on each of their faces at the slick of her feathers, how she reflects the sun as she zips around their heads, and laughs right along with them.

When he goes downstairs after finding the quarter, the note and Babytooth, he holds his breath again.

He waits for his toast to pop up while his fingers drum on the table nervously, waiting for either of his parents to suddenly look up and yell, _oh my god, there’s a hummingbird near your head, what the fuck,_ but nothing happens.

Babytooth pecks him lightly with her beak, and motions towards his parents, rolling her eyes. She squeaks as she does it, like, _they can’t see me, dummy, you know that._

_Yeah, I know,_ Jamie wants to tell her, but he doesn’t think his parents would appreciate their son’s newfound habit of talking to thin air.

When Sophie walks in, she’s saying something about her new headphones, but when she sees Jamie, she stops walking just as she reaches the sink.

Jamie holds it, and holds it, and holds his breath until his throat starts to itch.

Sophie stares, her eyes flickering over the spot where Babytooth is, but doesn’t come to settle on her until Babytooth flies over and hovers right in front of her face.

Jamie smothers a grin as Sophie’s eyes widen and she mouths, _Babytooth_ , like she’s trying to remember the lyrics to a song she used to listen to.

There’s a hint of a smile, then a sliver of a grin, and then she’s looking over at Jamie with something in her eyes that he hasn’t seen in a long time.

He inclines her head towards Babytooth, who chirps sunnily, and Sophie’s hand is shaking when it comes out.

Babytooth comes to perch on her hand and looks at Jamie with a combination of smugness and pride, chirping again.

“Holy _crap_ ,” Sophia says, barely audible, not looking up from where Babytooth has her feet lightly around her index finger.

“Believe me now?”

She glares, but there’s nothing behind it, and she’s still grinning, anyway, so he takes that as a win.

There are times, a lot of them, when Jamie catches people doing a double-take those few times when Babytooth flies beside him when they’re in public, instead of curling up in his pocket. Kids, mostly, but every once in a while he gets a teenager.

Once, a man in a double-breasted suit and a briefcase stops beside him at a crossing, looking right at her, buzzing away happily next to Jamie’s shoulder. The guy squints, like he can see something that’s just out of range, and then his mouth parts over a sharp gasp.

Jamie catches the guy’s eye, and raises a finger to his lips.

 

 

College is on the horizon, daunting and terrifyingly close, and everyone else has already picked something out from their brochures except Jamie.

“Look, I get it,” Cupcake says one day, a week before the very last day of high school. “You don’t want to move on. I don’t want to, either! But you’ll have me, and you’ll have Babytooth-”

“We don’t know when she has to go back.”

“What, so she’s renting you?”

“Wh- I don’t _know_! She can’t talk, and she’s awful at mining things.”

From where she’s sitting, Babytooth gives an offended-sounding squeak.

Jamie says, “Sorry,” to her, and then, to Cupcake: “Just- just give me time, okay?”

Cupcake looks at him, and Jamie remembers being eight years old and being chased by a monster-sized snow-ball carried by a monster-sized girl, bigger than him and more scary in every single way imaginable, and is so incredibly grateful for everything that’s happened to him, even if nothing ever happens again.

 

 

Four days until he goes away to college- Lawrence, the same as Cupcake, they made sure of it- his room is in boxes and he’s leaning against the window again, lost for words.

“Just give me,” he says, “a _sign_.”

He still doesn’t know what he’s asking for. He stopped knowing what he was looking for a long time before Babytooth came along.

He never really questioned why he tried this so much- talking to the moon, he means.

When he gets right down to it, he doesn’t know, really. It just feels- right. Like he’s meant to do it.

The moon doesn’t answer, but he sleeps with the blinds open that night.

 

 

The night before he has to get on a train and leave all of this behind- except Babytooth, who is at Cupcake’s for the night, who has promised is going to be nestling into his sleeve the whole ride and is going to be pissy as hell when she finally gets out- Jamie is about to go to bed when he hears something crackling behind him.

He spins, his heartbeat slamming up to a dangerous beat out of pure instinct, and watches as ice continues to form against the glass.

The ice spread out like a spider’s web, circling slowly until all the panes have completely frosted over, and Jamie’s heart is pounding a tattoo on his ribs.

He breathes out raggedly, and chokes on a laugh when it comes out as mist.

“Jack?”

No answer.

“Jack,” he says, and it’s thick in his throat.

No answer again, and it can’t be a trick, it _can’t_ be, it’s the middle of summer and Jamie’s believed enough for a billion people a billion times over-

“Was I that obvious?”

Again, Jamie turns, and he’s shaking, and it’s only half because of the cold.

“It’s summer,” he says, strangled, and he can’t stop smiling even if he tried, which he isn’t doing very hard. “Somehow, the ice tipped me off.”

Jack’s laugh is, ironically, like the first touch of sun after months of winter.

“Aw, look at you! All grown up and no place to go. Hey, or not,” he corrects himself, leaning on his crooked staff and casting a look around the room. “College, right?”

Jamie nods, wetting his lips, swallowing, because for some reason his throat is drier than it has been all summer.

Jack nods along with him, pushing off from his staff and twirling it in mid-air, spinning it fast at one point so it drifts upwards before coming back down into his hand. “Uh. Cool, I guess.” Then he laughs, pitching slightly. “Get it? Cool? Jack Frost joke, I know, I suck.”

He clears his throat, one hand coming up to scruff the back of his head. “That was _definitely_ not my best one. So, uh, how old are you now, kid?”

“Eighteen.”

“Yeah? Wow, you look-” Jack’s gaze rakes down him, something slow about it, before he’s breathing in quickly and his eyes are back up to his face. “-uh, eighteen. Yup.”

He clears his throat again, nodding just like he was doing less than thirty seconds ago. “I’m eighteen, I think.”

“You think?”

Jack shrugs. “I was seventeen-ish when I died.”

“When you _what_?”

In retrospect, Jamie thinks he could’ve gone easier on the octaves, and doesn’t blame Jack when he winces.

“Died,” Jack repeats, leaning his staff against one of the bed legs. “Didn’t I mention that?”

Jamie says, “You didn’t, no,” and it doesn’t come out flat like he wants it to. Instead, it comes out breathlessly, like he’s standing at the edge of a cliff ready to fall forwards.

Jack, surprisingly, looks kind of the same. “Okay.”

“How old are you?”

“What?”

“How old-”

“Uhhhh,” Jack says, his fingers twitching reflexively towards the staff. “Three hundred…ish.”

“Three-hudredish,” Jamie repeats, incredulous.

Jack stuffs both hands into his pockets, and if Jamie didn’t know any better, he’d say Jack looked almost sheepish. “Yeeeeep.”

Jamie can’t stop looking at him, even though his posture is stiff, almost uncomfortable. Still, he can’t stop from staring, drinking in as much as he can, because obviously this isn’t going to last long, he’s not Babytooth, he can’t fit easily into his pocket-

Jamie stares, taking in the usual ice-rimmed hoodie, the bare feet, the eyelashes soft with snow; how he scatters frost when he shifts.

“God, it’s so good to see you again.” Jamie’s closing the three steps between them before he can stop himself, and then his arms are closing around Jack’s shoulders, yanking him close.

Like the last time, Jack goes still for a second, his arms only coming around him and squeezing after a few seconds into the hug.

It’s just like Jamie remembers, except his arms are pressing into the small of Jack’s back instead of struggling to get around his waist, and it lasts about the same amount of time as it did before Jamie leans back.

And, because apparently his mouth is acting on autopilot tonight, he smiles, and he can tell it’s dopey just from feeling it on his face. “Just like last time.”

Jack’s smiling, too, but it’s twitching with something like uncertainty. “Last time?”

“Last time,” Jamie nods. “You- when I hugged you last time, you did that, too. When I first hug you, you freeze- oh, shut up,” he says when Jack grins, and it’s easy, and the words are rolling out faster than he’s thinking of them. “You _hesitate_ , I mean.”

“Yeah, well.” Jack looks down at his bare feet, clearing his throat again. Jamie’s starting to think it’s just for something to do with his voice. “Guess I didn’t get hugged much.”

“You- oh,” Jamie says, realizing for the first time in almost a decade, wanting to hit himself for not figuring it out before, and then, of course, it all tumbles out. “Because no-one could see you before, right?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, sounding startled. “Yeah, I- before, when you were sledding, people would just- you went right through me,” he finishes, like it’s being pulled out of him.

“And if people can’t see you, they can’t touch you?”

“I guess.”

“But what about the guardians? They can see you no matter what, right?”

Jack’s smiling again, still wavering. “Jeez, you’re still that little kid inside of it all, aren’t you? Yeah, they could see me. Touch me, even, but they weren’t the hugging _type_ , y’know? Except for Bunny, when you get to know him, but don’t tell him I told you that, ever. He’s oddly terrifying for an oversized kangaroo.”

“Bunny,” Jamie corrects automatically, and is caught off guard when Jack laughs.

“Oh, great, so you’re taking _his_ side?”

Jamie laughs with him, when it hits him suddenly and he stops laughing, his smile faltering. “But- if everyone else couldn’t, then you just went around invisible for all that time.”

Jack’s smile is gone now, and everything, everything about him screams _uncertain_ , though Jamie doesn’t know what about.

“You haven’t been touched in 300 years.”

Jack actually takes a tiny step back at that, and it’s like Jamie doesn’t have control of his own damn body anymore, because he takes a step forwards to counter it.

Jamie raises his hand, and there has to be something wrong with him, there has to be some malfunction in his brain, because he’s reaching up to cup one side of Jack’s face, and this time his hands are just as big as Jack’s are, and Jamie listens to the rattle of breath and leans into it.

He’s still shaking, still trembling all over whether he can help it or not, but strangely, the hand that’s shaking most is the one _not_ pressing into Jack’s cheek.

They’re less than an inch apart, and it’s then that Jamie realizes with a huff that could possibly be considered a laugh, that he’s taller than Jack, but only slightly.

Up until now, Jack has stood there, shock-still, his eyes tracking Jamie’s face, something unreadable in his gaze. He takes another sharp breath in when Jamie’s other hand comes up, his hands now bracketing Jack’s face entirely.

Jamie has to force himself not to jump when Jack’s hands come- slowly, haltingly, but they come- to rest at the dip of his hips.

“Uh,” Jack says, and it’s barely a breath- “Cold?”

It is. It’s freezing. It’s every ice cube in Jamie’s already-cold drink that he never needed. It’s every time he made a snow angel because he didn’t know another good way to get snow down his socks, his collar, up his shirt. It’s every snow day he’s spent outside, shivering until his mother warns him about frostbite and drags him indoors.

It’s every time he’s sat with his back pressed against the freezer, stood in the snow, under the spray of a cold shower because it’s the only way to feel the ice under his skin again.

“I don’t mind,” Jamie says, just as quiet, and keeps still for a second as Jack’s head tilts up ever so slightly.

Jamie listens to the soft click of Jack swallowing before he leans in until there’s no space left between them and he’s kissing him, and it’s freezing; their mouths moving slackly together.

It’s only a few seconds before Jack’s pulling away again, and both of their breath is coming in clouds.

“Sorry,” Jamie blurts, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Jack looks at him like he’s trying to look freaked out, but can’t quite manage it. “Wh- what are you sorry for? I’m the guy who nearly froze your face off, _literally_.”

“I’m fine,” Jamie says, and it’s true, other than his intense shivering. “No faces were frozen off. Promise.”

Jack pulls away a bit more and looks at him- really _looks_ , his eyes travelling all the way down and up again before his brow is wrinkling. “That’s-”

Then he laughs, casting his eyes downwards. “Okay, yeah, nope, that explains a lot, actually.”

“About what?”

For a second, Jack looks like he wants to push closer, but then he’s pulling away slowly and standing solidly in front of him. “Something’s up.”

“…Elaborate.”

“Ha, ha,” Jack says, and-

“Are you _blushing_?”

“No,” Jack says, flushing even harder.

Jamie balks. “I didn’t know you _could_ blush, what with the ice- thing-”

“Ice thing,” Jack repeats flatly. “Oh, god, we’re all going to die horribly.”

“ _Elaborate_ ,” Jamie sighs, pushing a hand through his hair, and Jack’s eyes track it for a second before he’s clearing his throat, yet again.

“Ever heard of the man in the moon?”

Jamie has, but not much other than a cartoon when he was six. “No?”

“Well, he’s heard of you.”

“What?”

Jack’s smile is back, the one Jamie’s gone to sleep and woken up seeing for ten years now- mischievous, blazing, and all in all like biting down on an ice cube.

He holds out his hand, palm up, and for a moment Jamie thinks back to Peter Pan, to faith, trust and pixie dust and everyone flying out the window with their arms splayed, and feels a surge of the same feeling he had felt after watching it for the first time, like frost gathering in his throat.

“What do you think about becoming a guardian,” Jack says, “for real this time?”


End file.
